EB1098624 by Knižní klub

Ludmila Veselovská

Wh-Questions: A CAse study in CzeCh

olomouc modern language monographs vol. 11

Wh -Questions: A Case study in Czech

Ludmila Veselovská

olomouc modern language monographs

O lo m o u c 2020

vol. 11

KATALOGIZACE V KNIZE – NÁRODNÍ KNIHOVNA ČR Veselovská, Ludmila, 1957Wh-questions : a case study in Czech / Ludmila Veselovská. -- First edition. -- Olomouc : Palacký University Olomouc, 2021. -- 1 online zdroj. -(Olomouc modern language monographs ; vol. 11) Částečně český text Obsahuje bibliografii, bibliografické odkazy a rejstřík ISBN 978-80-244-5966-0 (online ; pdf) * 811.162.3 * 81'367.322 * 81'367 * 81-115 * (048.8) – čeština – tázací věta – syntax – komparativní lingvistika – monografie 811.162.3 - Čeština [11]

DOI: 10.5507/ff.21.24459653 ISBN 978-80-244-5965-3 (print) ISBN 978-80-244-5966-0 (online: PDF)

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Reviewers:

prof. PhDr. Petr Karlík, CSc. Mgr. Radek Šimík, Ph.D.

Copy editors

Joseph Emonds Simon Gill

FIRST EDITION Unauthorized use of the work is a breach of copyright and may be subject to civil, administrative, or criminal liability.

The publishing of this book was enabled by financial support in 2021 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Czech Republic, to the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc - Project IGA_FF_2020 033 and IGA_FF 2021 017 International context for anglo-american linguistics, literature sciences and translatology.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.1.3 1.1.4 1.1.5

WH-MOVEMENT: TRANSFORMATION .................................. 12 The Movement Analysis................................................................ 13 Subcategorization .......................................................................... 14 Echo Questions and Case ............................................................... 15 A Note About Word Order ............................................................. 17 Binding of anaphors ....................................................................... 18 The “Wanna” Contraction .............................................................. 19 Wh-fronting in other structures .................................................... 20 Summary of Chapter 1 ................................................................. 22

CONSTRAINTS ON WH-MOVEMENT ..................................... 24

2.1.1 Pied-Piping .................................................................................... 24 2.1.2 The (un)bounded nature of Wh-Movement ..................................... 26 Long-distance Wh-Movement in Czech ........................................ 27 2.2.1 Bridge Verbs ................................................................................. 27 2.2.2 Wh with Infinitives ........................................................................ 31 Islands and Barriers ..................................................................... 33 2.3.1 PP Islands ...................................................................................... 34 2.3.2 Adjunct Islands .............................................................................. 36 2.3.3 Subject Islands............................................................................... 37 2.3.4 Coordinate Structure Island ............................................................ 38 2.3.5 Complex NP Islands ...................................................................... 40 2.3.6 Wh-Islands..................................................................................... 43 2.3.7 That-Trace Filter ............................................................................ 46 2.3.8 The Superiority Effect.................................................................... 47 The Left Branch Condition in Czech ............................................ 50 2.4.1 Comparing the extraction domains in English and Czech ................ 50 2.4.2 The Left Branch Condition and the DP Hypothesis ......................... 54 2.4.3 Remnant movement ....................................................................... 57 2.4.4 Extraction from PP ........................................................................ 60 Theoretical Impact of the early Analyses ..................................... 64 2.5.1 (Extended) Standard Theory........................................................... 64 2.5.2 Q-Morpheme and [+WH] Feature ................................................... 65 2.5.3 Government & Binding .................................................................. 67

MULTIPLE WH-MOVEMENT ................................................ 69 The English and Czech background ............................................. 69 The first analyses of Slavic Multiple Wh-questions. ..................... 71 5

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3.2.1 Introducing Slavic data (Wachowicz, 1974; 1978) ......................... 71 3.2.2 Czech data (Toman 1981).............................................................. 73 Principles and Parameters ........................................................... 74 3.3.1 IP Adjunction (Lasnik and Saito 1984) .......................................... 74 3.3.2 Taxonomy of Slavic languages (Rudin 1988) ................................. 76 A Note about interpretation of multiple Wh-structures .............. 79 Summary of Chapter 3 ................................................................. 82

4. 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3.1 4.3.2

CZECH MULTIPLE WH-QUESTIONS..................................... 84 Positions of Multiple WHs ........................................................... 85 Wh-words and clitic position ......................................................... 87 The Position of Czech Clitics ........................................................ 88 Further Distinctions in the Wh-positions ..................................... 92 The unmarked Complementizer že ‘that’ ....................................... 92 2nd Person AUX affix ...................................................................... 94 Conjoined Wh-constituents ............................................................ 96 Wh-Island Constraint Revisited ................................................... 98 Doubly-Filled COMP Constraint (Relativized)............................... 98 Extractions from the Wh-Islands .................................................. 101 Summary of Chapter 4 ................................................................104

MORE ARTICULATED CP DOMAINS ...................................107

Sentence Dynamism and Marked Information Structure ..........107 5.1.1 Integrating [WH] and Focus ........................................................ 109 5.1.2 From a single CP to a Split CP .................................................... 111 Categorial domains for IS features .............................................112 5.2.1 The first proposals....................................................................... 113 5.2.2 Rizzi’s Cartography of Syntactic Structures (1997, 2001)............. 114 5.2.3 Split CP in English (Haegeman 2000).......................................... 115 5.2.4 Operator Phrase (Citko 1998) ...................................................... 117 5.2.5 Focus Movement (Boškovič 1997) .............................................. 120 Information structure in the 21st century ...................................122 5.3.1 Pragmatics of the Left Periphery (Sturgeon 2008) ........................ 122 5.3.2 The Semantics of Wh-structures (Gruet-Skrabalova 2011)............ 125 5.3.3 Language-specific PF Spell-Out (Turek 2012) ............................. 127 5.3.4 Discourse Trees (Kaspar 2017) .................................................... 130 5.3.5 Clause Typing (Bacskai-Atkari 2018) .......................................... 135 5.3.6 Wh-scope marking....................................................................... 138 Summary - Generative History of Wh-Phenomena ....................140

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SUPERIORITY EFFECTS IN CZECH: CORPUS STATISTICS . 148

The Superiority Effects Revisited ............................................... 148 6.1.1 Root vs. Embedded contexts ........................................................ 148 6.1.2 Expermental testing Superiority Effects in Czech (Meyer 2004) ... 149 6.1.3 Use of the Czech National Corpus ................................................ 151 Two initial Wh-constituents with no intervenor: corpus data .... 152 6.2.1 Nominative-Nominative combinations ......................................... 155 6.2.2 Nominative-Accusative combinations .......................................... 155 6.2.3 Other case-marked Wh-combinations ........................................... 157 6.2.4 Combinations with Wh-Adverbs................................................... 159 6.2.5 Reconsidering the proposed hierarchies ........................................ 160 Coordinate fronted Wh-words: corpus data............................... 162 6.3.1 Coordinated Case-marked pronominals and combinations with Adverbials ................................................................................... 164 6.3.2 Coordinated Adverbials ............................................................... 167 Hierarchies, Tendencies, and Remaining Puzzles ...................... 170 6.4.1 Formal Hierarchies ...................................................................... 170 6.4.2 Some missing complex examples ................................................. 173 Dissociated multiple Wh-constituents ......................................... 177 6.5.1 Formal Hierarchies ......................................................................177 6.5.2 Animacy Hierarchy ...................................................................... 182 6.5.3 The Intervenors............................................................................ 183 Conclusions about the corpus data ............................................. 189

APPENDIX: MULTIPLE WH-QUESTIONS AND CORPUS DATA 191 TABLE 1 - WH + WH ................................................................ 191 TABLE 2 - Coordinated 2WH .................................................... 197 TABLE 3 - WH – X(P) – WH ..................................................... 203 TABLE 4 - More than 2 WH (including coordinations and minimal intervenor) .................................................................... 217 TABLE 5 – A random selection of in situ (?) combinations ....... 217 Table 6: Candidates for the Long-distance Wh-Movement........ 218

REFERENCES................................................................................ 219 INDEX ........................................................................................... 235

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ABBREVIATIONS Adj(P) AmE A(P) Adj(P) Adv(P) ATB AUX

BrE C2 position CF CL CLD COMP C(P) CT Det/D(P) Dem/DEM e.g. f/ F Fin Foc G&B HTLD i.e. I/INFL INF [iF] IS MFS Mod MP N(P) NEG/Neg Num Op / OP P(P) P&P

Adjective (Phrase) American English Adjective/Adverb (Phrase) Adjective (Phrase) Adverb (Phrase) across-the-board extractions Auxiliary British English ‘second’ or ‘Wackernagel’s’ position (of clitics) Contrastive Focus Clitic (subscript following pronoun or Auxiliary) Contrastive Left Dislocation complementizer Complementizer (Phrase) Contrastive Topic Determiner (Phrase); a functional head (phrase) above NP demonstrative for example Feature (f: (purely) semantic, F: grammatical) Finite Focus Government & Binding (framework) Hanging Topic Left Dislocation that is Inflection; a functional head above VP. T is also used. Infinitive interpreted (weak) feature Information Structure Multiply Filled Specifier Modal Measure Phrase Noun (Phrase) Negation Numeral Operator, Operator Phrase Preposition (Phrase) Principles & Parameters (framework)

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POSS φ/Phi RC REFL

RN [Q] Q(P) RC RHHR SG SPEC T/Top T(P) Θ (role) [uF] V(P) [WH] WH Whw.r.t.

Possessive (Morpheme) Nominal features (Number, Gender, etc.) relative clause Reflexive (Pronoun) Result Nominal question/interrogative morpheme or feature Quantifier (Phrase) Relative Clause Right Hand Head Rule Singular Specifier Topic Tense (Phrase), equivalent to I/INFL Theta (role), (grammaticalized) semantic role uninterpreted (strong) feature Verb (Phrase) interrogative feature Wh-element interrogative/relative constituents (pronouns, Adverbs, etc.) with respect to

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SUBSCRIPTS (Glosses) in non-English examples Ordering of a cluster of Phi features in glosses: subscript Person + Gender + Number.Case. For space reasons, only features that are relevant to a discussion are provided in the subscripts. 1, 2, 3 ACC DAT F GEN INF INS LOC M N NOM P/PL PRT S/SG

Person (on Predicate) Accusative (Case), Object Case Dative (Case) Feminine (φ Gender) Genitive (Case) Infinitive Instrumental (Case) Locative (Case) Masculine (φ Gender) Neuter (φ Gender) Nominative (Case), Subject Case Plural (φ Number) Participle Singular (φ Number)

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INTRODUCTION This study concentrates on the structural analysis of interrogative sentences (Wh-questions). The discussion is empirically based on some few English and more Czech paradigms. As for the English data, a summary of influential generative analyses is used mainly to illustrate the steps in the development of framework-based analyses, starting from the late 1960s. The Czech data is provided to demonstrate parallel paradigms and analyses, concentrating on universal similarities that surface in both languages, as well as on theoretically relevant distinctions between them. The topic of this study is not new to me. My first linguistic work (an M.A. thesis in 1994) was about Wh-movement in Czech, and during my career I have authored several studies dealing with the specifics of Czech Whconstructions. Material from some of these works has been used in this monograph (with relevant references). Much improvement of the text is also due to integrating the comments by anonymous reviewers - whose carefull reading I highly appreciate. Since the beginning I have tried to argue that Wh-phenomena cannot be fully described without reference to (and comparison among) some formalized variant of pragmatic phenomena, more precisely the information structure of clauses. This assumption is based on my belief that what is called ‘free’ word order in Czech does not represent a kind of puzzling phenomenon requiring some other autonomous linguistic field. Instead, I have argued that properly defined concepts such as Focus and Topic must be analysed within the realm of (universal) formal syntax. I am happy that in the 21 st century this idea has become non-controversial and that my younger colleagues take it for granted, diligently developing a more structured formal description of a clause which readily confirms and explains the Czech data. The work on this monograph has been supported by my faculty, including some student researchers. Above all, my partner was already a substantial help when I wrote my first study of Wh-movement in Czech, and he remains no less helpful now. I am aware of, and grateful for, his presence and support. Ludmila Veselovská

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1. WH-MOVEMENT: TRANSFORMATION Since the beginning of the generative enterprise, Wh-structures have been discussed as a prototypical example of a structure derived by transformation – a syntactic dislocation attested under specific conditions. With the progress of the generative framework, the concept of syntactic operations, including transformations, underwent a substantial development. Still, the analyses of motivated and systematic reorderings involving specific structures have always formed a crucial part of the model. For example, in present-day Minimalism, the label used for transformations is internal Merge. The nature of the operation, however, remains basically the same: a constituent independently assumed/required to be represented in some structural position (re-)appears in another, systematically hierarchically higher position. Whatever the variants, the theoretical model requires the presence of a unique element in several places, only one of which (usually the initial position) contains a phonetically realized copy. Given that the technicalities and labels of the process (transformation, movement, internal Merge, etc.) are not the topic of this paper, I will use the general and transparent term movement (or fronting) here. The position which contains a phonetically unrealized copy/trace of the constituent will be labelled as a (sometimes coindexed) <t>. In the first chapter of this study we will first see some introductory data as described in the fundamental and terminologically inspired dissertation of Ross (1967), published as Ross (1986), because this work is the source of most of the original argumentation for a transformation analysis of the Whstructures. I will also integrate into the discussion a more general approach to Wh-constructions as presented in Chomsky’s On Wh Movement (1977). In this study Chomsky argued in favour of parallel characteristics and analyses of several Wh-constructions, including Wh-questions, relative clauses, exclamatives, and also comparative clauses. Although not all the details of the above studies have survived till today in the same form, their data and paradigms remain essential for the framework till now, still representing a useful formal tool for structural analysis and more general cross-language comp arison. The present-day analysis of the English data will be represented by the descriptions as they appear in standard grammar manuals such as Haegeman and Guéron (1999) and Adger (2003). As for the Czech (and some other Slavic) data, it will be mentioned in diverse places to demonstrate that the phenomena are attested cross-linguistically. I will demonstrate some data from some other languages, too, often from Slavic ones, using mainly the studies by Wachowicz (1974), Rudin (1988), and several others discussed in much more detail in the following chapters.

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The Movement Analysis In this section, I am going to summarize typical empirical arguments in favour of the structural analysis used in what is called Wh-transformation, providing examples from Czech and English. An instinctive feeling for a kind of movement (reordering) analysis is based on simple comparison of the declarative and interrogative constituent orders. In the following examples (1.1) the bold elements on the right and on the left represent parallel constituents. Those on the right, moreover, can be used in a fragmental short answer for the respective Wh-questions. To illustrate the similarity, I will use the Czech examples in (a/b etc.) and English in the structurally equivalent translations in (a’/b’ etc.). The descriptive comments then follow.1 (1.1) a. a’. b. b’. c. c’. d. d’. e. e’.

Koho Robert čte? whomACC Robert reads “Whom does Robert read?” -

(Robert čte) Descarta. (Robert reads) DescartesACC “(He reads) Descartes.”

O čem by měl mluvit? - (Měli by mluvit) o sobě. about what should talk (should talk) about self “What should he talk about?” - “(He’d talk about) himself.” Kdy chtějí přijet? - (Chtějí přijet) nyní. when want3P arrive (want3P arrive) now “When do they want to arrive?” - “(They want to arrive) now.” Jaká je Marie? - (Ona je) šťastná. how is MaryNOM (she is) happyNOM “How is Mary?” - “(She is) happy.” Kdo pracuje těžce? - David (pracuje těžce) whoNOM works hard DavidNOM (works hard) “Who is working hard?” - “David (is working hard).”

The structures above contain identical constituents, and the pairs are clearly semantically related. The constituents in the second example of each pair, however, have been reordered and the reordering follows a specific pattern: in English they show a preposing (fronting) of the Modal/Auxiliary in front of the Subject (Subject-Auxiliary inversion) and a preposing (fronting) of the 1

Czech is a highly inflectional language and therefore the lexical categories have categorial inflection (agreement). To write down all the features interpreted and present in Czech morphology would make the examples exceedingly long. Therefore, especially when space is limited, I will mark the inflection only when it is relevant to the matter being discussed.

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interrogative constituent in front of the Auxiliary. The example in (1.1e) showing the questioning of the Subject represents an apparent exception, resulting from the co-occurrence of the two frontings. In the Czech examples we can see that an equivalent of the English Auxiliary is missing, being compensated for by interrogative intonation.2 The other reordering, however, is possible (and standard) in Czech; in a typical Czech Wh-question the interrogative constituent appears in the clause-initial position in the same way as in English. Apart from the description of the systematic reordering in both English and Czech, we are also able to state explicitly the motivation for the dislocation which is shared by all the examples in (1.1). In other words: under which conditions can we predict a specific ordering? The interrogative pattern is typically interpreted as an (unmarked) signal of a specific clausal modality – that of Wh-interrogatives. Every framework which prefers more simple and uniform analyses has to consider that the similarity of the declarative and interrogative structures is based on their common source. In the sections below I will list more arguments which support the parallelism between the pairs of examples in (1.1).

1.1.1 Subcategorization The argument for the Wh-transformation based on subcategorization assumes that a given Verb selects a specific number and form of its complements. The example below shows the Verb put and demonstrates that this English Verb selects two arguments in the form of NP and PP – both of which are obligatory.3 (1.2)

a. b. c.

John put [NP the book ][PP on the table]. *John put [NP the book ]. *John put [PP on the table].

The semantic and complement subcategorization of put is in (1.3). (1.3) a. b.

s-selection c-selection

put,

V, <Agent, Patient, Location> V, [+N, +P]

The subcategorization of the Czech Verb položit ‘put’ is analogous to (1.3). The grammaticality of the Wh-questions in (1.4) signals that the preposed Wh-elements – the Wh-pronoun (NP) and Wh-Adverb (PP) in (1.5) – represent the obligatory constituents missing in their postverbal positions. In (1.4) the postverbal positions are marked as <t> with the presumably identical categorial (phrasal) label, as we assume a kind of feature identity between the 2 3

See Daneš (1964). For the purpose of this argumentation the distinction between NP and the DP of Abney (1987) is irrelevant. For simplicity I am going to use NP.

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phonetically unrealized elements <t> and the respective phonetically overt Whconstituents in the clause-initial position.4 (1.4)

(1.5)

Co Tom položil na stůl ? [NP whatACC] Tom put [NP <t>] on table [NP What ] did Tom put [NP <t>] on the table ? Kam Tom položil tu knihu ? [PP where] Tom put the book [PP <t>] [PP Where] did Tom put the book [PP <t>]?

The argument presented above is based on the obligatorily di-transitive character of put (and its Czech equivalent), and it can be extended straightforwardly to other syntactic relations. We can see that its overall validity is uncontroversial in both languages.

1.1.2 Echo Questions and Case Another argument in favour of the Wh-movement analysis, similar to the one based on complementation, can be constructed on the basis of morphological case (or a version of case theory). Consider the contrast in example (1.6) below. It shows that a pronominal Object combined with a lexical V or preposition must be marked with an overt Object case. (1.6)

a. b.

She loves *he/him. She thinks about *he/him a lot.

Moreover, the example below demonstrates that in what are called echo questions, the pronoun can be replaced by a Wh-pronoun – resulting in a discourse-related question asking for clarification of some misheard (or surprising) part of the previous utterance. The Wh-pronoun is properly casemarked according to its position/function. (1.7)

a. b.

She loves *who/whom? She thinks about *who/whom a lot?

In example (1.8) we can see that in a standard Wh-question the extracted Whpronominal at least optionally shows the Objective form whom. (1.8)

a. b.

Whom did she love? About whom does she think a lot?

The Czech examples are marked as CZ in (1.4a) and (1.5a) and the gloss provides the structural description. The parallel (translational equivalent) English example is below in (b) with the label EN.

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In Modern English, the Object case with Wh-pronouns seems preferred when they are overtly adjacent to the Verb or preposition and is otherwise optional. However, the case on Wh is not always optional. Consider (1.9), which shows a finite Predicate combined with an overt Subject/nominative case. (1.9)

a. b.

She thinks he will come. *She thinks him will come.

The example in (1.10) provides a clear contrast showing that the nominative form who is the only grammatical form in standard English, while the Objective form whom is not. (1.10)

a. b.

I wonder who she thinks will come. *I wonder whom she thinks will come.

In Czech, case marking does not require any form of PF adjacency with Verbs and therefore parallel contrasting examples are easy to provide. The following examples (1.11) illustrate Wh-constituents appearing in the canonical postverbal position in these pragmatically marked echo questions. The example provides both (a/c) Czech (CZ) and (b/d) English (EN) examples, the latter used as a gloss. (1.11)

Ty jsi viděl Joea/koho/*komu? you AUX2S saw JoeACC/whoACC/ *whoDAT “You saw Joe/who(m)?” Ty jsi pomohl Joeovi/komu/*koho? you AUX helped JoeDAT/whoDAT/* whoACC “You helped who(m)?”

Notice that in Czech the subcategorized direct Object koho ‘whoACC’ in (a) must be marked with the Accusative and in the Beneficiary (c) komu ‘whomDAT’ must be in the Dative. The following examples in (1.12) represent the reordered pattern (Wh-questions), and the Czech pronouns show the same case marking as in the declarative and echo question patterns in (1.11). (1.12)

Koho/*Komu? jsi whoACC/ *whoDAT AUX2S “Who(m) did you see?”

viděl sawPAST

ty? you

Komu/*Koho? jsi whoDAT/* whoACC AUX2S “Who(m) did you help?”

pomohl helpPAST

ty? you

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Case theory may have different versions, but each of them would have to identify the source, location, and context for the resulting case morphology. If it is assumed that the declaratives (and echo questions) represent a standard structure with a regular morphology (and unmarked word order), the Whquestions represent a kind of motivated and systematic reordering. Here this reordering is called a movement, whatever its more precise description might be. On the basis of this analysis, we assume that the postverbal (Wh-) pronouns in (1.11) are equivalents (i.e. copies, traces, or whatever the framework prefers) of the clause-initial Wh-pronouns in (1.12). In the next parts of the study I will use the above formalism, which refers to movement and uses a “trace/copy” <t> to mark the theoretically assumed pre-movement structural position(s) of the dislocated constituent.

1.1.3 A Note About Word Order In the preceding sections (and throughout this study) I am assuming for Czech the unmarked constituent order basically the same as in English: i.e. Subject - Predicate - Object(s) - Adverbials. This ordering is taken for unmarked (canonical) and I use it when marking the position of traces/ copies in the structures with fronted (moved, externally merged) Wh-elements. However, Czech is a consistent Null Subject language and a free wordorder language. If Subjects are overt, they can appear both pre- and postverbally depending on their role in information structure: e.g. when overt, pronominal Subjects are always highly prominent in discourse and therefore usually clause final. Similar freedom within a simple finite clause domain is typical also for Object(s) and Adverbials. Apart from he theory relevant distribution of traces, the variety of alternative (scrambled) word-orders represents a problem also when forming salient examples to demonstrate Czech echo-questions (as in the preceding section 1.1.2) or when looking for examples of extractions out of complex DPs (as in section 2.3.5 below). In both these cases the canonical word order is usually not the one that sounds most natural to native speakers. Considering the examples of non-fronted Wh-constituents (Subject, Object(s) and Adverbials) in what can be called a Czech equivalent of echoquestion, the following example (2.14) shows the non-fronted Wh-Object in Dative can in fact appear elsewhere. The middle (postverbal, canonical) position is not ideal at all. The most salient is the clause final position marked as rhematic/ focus, and this is unlikely to be a base (in situ) position.5 (1.13)

Komu Petr včera dal dárek? whomDAT PeterNOM yesterday gave presentACC “Whom did Peter give a present <t> yesterday?”

??? Petr

komu

včera

dal

dárek?

In the example (2.14a) I mark the DAT position as following the ACC, but given the discussion here, it is just a theory based approximation.

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c. d. e.

??? Petr ? Petr Petr

včera včera včera

komu dal dal

dal komu dárek

dárek? dárek? komu?

The same word order dilemma we face when demonstrating extractions of attributes from a complex DP (as in sections 2.3.5 and 2.4). The remnant DP (containing the trace of the extracted Wh-element) will be most acceptable post-verbally, irrespective of its sentence function (i.e. including Subjects) and least acceptable structures will have this DP scrambled in the middle field. Given the limits of the author and the time and space reasons, this study will still use the canonical word order, in spite of the fact that the presented analyses are therefore not precise (complete) because they do not include some undefined steps in derivations leading to the preferred word order varieties.

1.1.4

Binding of anaphors

More arguments in favour of Wh-movement analyses are provided by referring to binding relations involving certain co-referential elements. Since Chomsky (1981), the distribution of syntactic anaphors (reflexives and reciprocal) has been standardly explained using a hierarchical concept of “Binding Theory”. (1.14) Principle A (Binding Theory, Chomsky 1993) An anaphor must be bound in its governing category. The Wh-question in (1.15) contains a Czech reflexive possessive pronoun, the anaphor svých ‘yourself’s’. This pronoun is co-referential with the φ features of the Subject ty ‘you’ although it precedes both the Subject and the agreeing Auxiliary.6 The initial position of the anaphor therefore violates even the very simplified version of Principle A as stated in (1.14). (1.15) CZ EN

Kolik svých fotek jsi ty ukázal Tomovi? how many self’s photos AUX2S you showed <t> TDAT “How many photos of yourself did you show <t> to Tom?”

To explain the grammaticality of (1.15) while keeping some version of a binding theory as in (1.14), we propose that the fronted Wh-constituent originated in some lower position and has been moved to the clause-initial position by some syntactic process – a Wh-movement. With this kind of 6

For Slavic languages, both overt Subject and verbal morphology reflect the same φ features and therefore both can be claimed to be antecedents of an anaphor. Given that Czech is a consistent Null Subject language, the Subject-Predicate agreement remains in many cases the only representative of the morphologically overt φ features of the assumed Subject in finite clauses. A detailed discussion of the Slavic relativized anaphoric binder (including infinitives) is provided in Progovac (1993).

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movement, it is the original position of the anaphor (i.e. the trace <t>) that complies with Principle A, forcing the attested co-reference.

1.1.5 The “Wanna” Contraction In English, the structural analysis of the constraint on the colloquial phonetic contraction wanna ‘want to’ provides another argument in favour of a movement of Wh-constituents. This phenomenon is used to indirectly show the presence and position of the empty trace constituent <t> of Wh. Let us consider the examples below. In (1.16a) we can see a salient context for the contraction wanna and in (1.16b) an example of a structure which does not tolerate it. (1.16)

Who do you want to/wanna defeat? - We want to/wanna defeat John.

Who do you want to/*wanna defeat John? - I want Mary to defeat John.

The ungrammaticality of a the contraction wanna in (1.16b) can be explained by referring to the movement analysis of Wh-questions. More specifically, the (un)grammaticality seems to support the existence of the trace present between the Verb want and the infinitival particle to. We claim that the phonetic unification of want and to into wanna is possible under adjacency. In (1.17a) the trace (covert copy) of the dislocated Wh-constituent is located in the canonical position of English Objects (immediately after the Verb) and therefore it does not interrupt the adjacency of want and to, so the two can be contracted to wanna. (1.17)

Who do you want to/wanna defeat <t>?

In (1.17b), however, the Agent of defeat (Object of want) is questioned, and the trace <t> interrupts the adjacency of want and to needed for phonetic unification, and therefore the contraction wanna is not acceptable. b.

Who do you want <t> to/*wanna defeat John?

An analysis which does not assume a kind of movement does not have any principled explanation for the ungrammaticality of (1.16b). To sum up: in this section we have seen that there are semantic, morphosyntactic, and phonetic arguments in favour of a movement/dislocation analysis of Wh-questions, some of which I provided in the sub-sections. They show that the Wh-questions, in both Czech and English, exemplify a motivated and systematic reordering, which is best described in terms of Wh-fronting. The characteristics of this process in English and Czech are not restricted only

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to Wh-questions. In the next section I am going to show that similar characteristics are, interestingly, shared by some other constructions as well.

Wh-fronting in other structures This study concentrates on the characteristics of Wh-questions. Interrogatives, however, are not unique. Referring to Ross (1967), who describes most of the structures that figure in early generativist descriptions, Emonds (1976, chap. 5) lists a variety of English Wh-fronting structures. He defines the process as fronting which moves an NP, PP, or AP to the clause-initial position, if those phrases include the Wh-element (feature) such as e.g. the lexical entries: who, what, which, when, where, why, how, whose, whether, and a few others. Some typical uses are repeated below, together with the usual terms used for the constructions. The examples in (1.18)-(1.23) are adopted from Emonds (1976, 181). The English examples in (1.18) illustrate the interrogative clauses – the direct Wh-questions which are the topic of this study. These structures are usually full finite clauses, but they can appear as infinitives, too. With English infinitives, however, the Subject-Auxiliary inversion is missing and the only Wh-constituent allowed is why. In the examples the preposed Wh-constituent is in bold. (1.18) Direct Questions

INF

a. b. c. d.

Whose father was the president? In which town does he reside? How did he achieve this? How big does this appear on the screen?

e. f.

Why buy more stock at this time? Why knock yourself out for someone else?

Subject-Auxiliary inversion is also absent in the following examples of exclamations ((1.19) and conditional clauses (1.20). (1.19) Exclamations a. b.

What big paws he has! How brave he is!

(1.20) Conditional clauses a. b.

Whatever measures they take, they are sure to fail. However long you stay, you will be welcome.

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In the examples of relative clauses in (1.21) the Wh-constituent is again in bold. Notice that relative clauses can have both finite and infinitival forms. (1.21) Relative clauses

INF

a. b. c. d.

I found a man [RC who you can buy tickets from]. I found a man [RC from whom you can buy tickets]. The taste [RC of what they are serving] is delicious. The only place [RC where I feel at home] is in a city.

e. f. g.

I found a man [RC from whom to buy tickets]. You have fifteen days[RC in which to finish]. Some tools[RC with which to work] will soon arrive by mail.

The following indirect questions can follow either Verbs or Nouns, and they also appear in both finite and infinitival forms. There is no inversion in these structures. (1.22) Indirect questions after V

INF

a. b. c.

I wonder whether he will show up. I forgot how efficient she was. They were not sure (of) why she left.

d. e.

They told you how to operate that. John asked Mary when to stop.

(1.23) Indirect questions after N a.

INF

The problem of how often we should meet hasn’t been discussed. John’s understanding of how this works is faulty.

c. d.

The question of who to consult in this matter is perplexing. They have no knowledge of which routes to take.

For Emonds (1976) Wh-fronting was a transformation which preposes a Whconstituent to the position of COMP – the sentence-initial grammatical formative category proposed in the studies of the English Complementizer system in Bresnan (1970; 1976). Chomsky’s (1977) essay, On Wh-movement, is a highly influential study of several fronting processes that included this group of Whconstructions, in a late Extended Theory framework. The author attempted to perform a uniform analysis of several constructions arguably based on Whmovement. The study generalizing Wh-movement represented a kind of turning point for research in this field and influenced the later development of

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linguistic theory. Much of the data and analyses presented in the following chapters is a reaction to the rich paradigms, proposals, and terminology already provided in Ross (1967) and Chomsky (1977).

Summary of Chapter 1 In this chapter, I introduced the phenomena of Wh-questions, concentrating on Czech data. In Section 1.1 we saw semantic and syntactic arguments in favour of the structure-based movement analysis confirming the theoretically predicted binding and selection (subcategorization) of lexical Verbs and prepositions. Overt case morphology and linearity were also used to argue in favour of the syntactic nature of the Wh re-orderings. Section 1.2 briefly introduced some English structures showing similar characteristics, the existence of which supports the idea of a general dislocation analysis of Wh-questions. Given the arguments provided in this chapter, I take it as demonstrated that Wh-questions, in both Czech and English, represent a motivated and systematic re-ordering best described in terms of a process of Wh-fronting. (1.24) Wh-movement

a) Wh-fronting b) Subj-Aux “inversion”

CP WH

C’ C

IP I I < twill >

(1.25) EN CZ

v/VP

< thow many photos > How many photos Kolik fotek how many photos

will

Peter

< twill > show

bude

Petr PeterNOM

ukazovat show

FUT

< twh> to Tom?’ Tomovi? TomDAT

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The structure in (1.24) is thus intended to cover the data demonstrated in this chapter, in accordance with the formalization of a standard minimalist framework. It is adopted from Adger (2003) for English. The Wh-question structure in (1.24) assumes two standard functional projections above the Verb Phrase, whose heads are C and I. The top projection of CP hosts the Whconstituent in its specifier (a phrasal position), and the head C position is the landing site of the interrogative fronting of the Auxiliary. The lower functional domain IP contains a Subject (obligatorily overt in English), and the head position is the base position for the (external) Merge of the Auxiliary (in traditional terms the position of the sentence operator). The adjunct Whpronoun is presumably base-generated inside the VP. The proposed movements (in English) are suggested by dotted arrows. As for Czech, we can see in (1.25) that the equivalence concerns minimally the initial position of the fronted Wh-constituent. The surface overt positions of Subject, Verb, and Object can be different in Czech (the word order in the example above has been chosen to be most similar to that of English). In the following chapters, I will concentrate on a more detailed description of the Wh-questions and the theoretical concepts used for their analysis.

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